All posts in Azerbaijan

  • October 8, 2016

    A Few Specific Muslims I Have Talked To

    Over the course of the last few years, I’ve talked to many Muslim people about faith. For some reason, these are the ones that stand out in my memory for the unexpectedness of what they said, the sincerity of their belief, the difference between my perception of what a Muslim looks like and what they looked like, their personal qualities, or some combination of these things. I’ve tried to write what they said without interpreting it here – although of course the questions that I asked in order to get them to talk more may betray some expectations I may have had.

    Azerbaijan, 2015 – Khalid

    I met Khalid online while in Azerbaijan. We spent a day walking through the old city talking about life in Azerbaijan, life in general. Many people in Azerbaijan are not particularly religious. Khalid was more religious than many – religious enough in any case to feel the need to impress on me fairly early on that “ISIS and people like them are not real Islam.”

    As we were walking through Baku’s old city, he said, “You know, the world is a bit like a video game. Game companies and programmers create video games with certain parameters, and certain rules for winning. I understand that God could have created the world in any way he chose, but he chose this way. So I think that the most important thing about life is to follow the rules of this game, because the rules could be completely different if God had willed it.”

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    Kyrgyzstan, 2016 – Marina

    Marina did my nails at a salon in Bishkek. She was a cheerful ethnically Russian woman originally from Kyrgyzstan, who’d donned a shirt that day which betrayed more than a hint of cleavage.

    “Do you like this job?” I asked her. “Oh yes!” she said. “I love this job. I love making people feel happy and beautiful. It is very interesting and funny for me.”

    “How did you end up doing this job?” I asked.

    “Well,” she said, “I used to live in Dubai. My first ex-husband was Syrian. And I had no job. I was very bored. He said that I would get an education and continue university when I got married to him, but really I was just all the time at home – no education, nothing! And you know, in Dubai you have people to do everything for you so I didn’t even do houseworks. We divorced and I moved back here to where I grew up and got trained to do this job. I’m very happy now doing this.”

    “That’s great.” I said.

    “So where are you from?” she asked.

    “Canada,” I said. “But I actually live in Istanbul with my boyfriend.”

    “Is he Turkish?” she asked.

    “Yes, he is,” I answered.

    “Does his family like you?” she asked. “My second ex-husband was Turkish and his family did not like me.”

    “Oh?” I said. “Why not? Because you weren’t Muslim?”

    “I am Muslim!” she crowed. “I converted before I even married my first husband – and he didn’t even believe in anything, not anything, nothing. He didn’t want me to become a Muslim. But for me being Muslim felt right. My second husband’s family just didn’t like me because I was not Turkish. They wanted to their son a Turkish girl. You must be careful with your boyfriend and his family.”

    “How did you decide to convert to Islam?” I asked.

    “Well,” she said. “It didn’t happen immediately. Actually, it used to be, I used to have a job and on my breaks I would go out behind a mosque… to smoke. And I would hear the call to prayer – you know the call to prayer? And it didn’t happen immediately, but I felt something. I really felt it. And for me religion is something you feel. So I converted. Not everybody understands that religion is something you feel. I tried to explain it to my mother once. I said, “If you named your daughter Ayshe, how would you feel?” And she said, “That name is feel wrong for my daughter.” And I said that if I had a daughter named like “Maria,” or “Anna” I feel myself the same way that “Ayshe” is for her. Then she was understanding me.

    At the end of the pedicure, I asked her if she drank.

    “Of course!” she said. “Yes, of course I drink!”

    “What kind of vodka would you recommend I bring home from Kyrgyzstan?” I asked.

    “They are mostly all nice,” she said. “If you pay a little more, they are better.”

     

    Kyrgyzstan, Ramadan 2016 – Nurdin

    Nurdin was an AirBnB host in his late twenties that I found along the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul. Despite being ethnically Kyrgyz (Kyrgyz people are – at least traditionally – Muslims) he was observing his first Ramadan fast. His parents, brother, and sister-in-law were not fasting, so he spent a lot of time in his room until after sunset when he would come and join the rest of us to eat. I didn’t understand he was fasting until I’d been staying at his place for five days already; I invited him to go hiking with me if he wasn’t busy and he apologized for not coming as he didn’t think he could force his body to hike if he wasn’t eating all day.

    “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I hadn’t realized you were observing Ramadan. Of course you shouldn’t go hiking.”

    “Yes,” he said. “Sorry I didn’t tell you, but I just think Ramadan and religion are private things – you do them for yourself, they are between you and God. It is not good to do them only to boast to other people that you’re doing them. You know, here in Kyrgyzstan we have big problems with radicalization these days – these people are not practicing the real Islam, but I want to practice Islam in a good way. So that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

    Turkey, 2014 – Ayse

    Ayse was an incongruously kind and patient housekeeper for the first (and last) family I worked with in Turkey. She arrived wearing her hijab every morning, but usually removed it to tie her hair back if the man of the family wasn’t home. One day I tried asking her to help me with something in broken Turkish; she asked if it could wait until after. It was then that I noticed she had her head covered. “Oh sorry,” I said. “Yes, go do your prayers. It’s not urgent.”

    “You know the prayers?!” she asked excitedly. “Do you know Ramadan too?!”

     

    No Comments / Azerbaijan, Ex-Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey /

  • August 24, 2016

    The Armenian Genocide in Conversation

    Summer 2012

    I first learned about the Armenian Genocide in university, but the first exposure I had to the controversy it is the centre of in Turkey and the Caucasus came a year later, when I found myself a student at a summer program in France.

    For a reason unbeknownst to me, the group of fifteen classmates had come to include four Turkish women, two of whom spoke a very approximate  French and one of whom provided little evidence that she knew any French at all. Her name was Deniz.

    One day after class, about ten of the group members decided to go out for a beer, including Deniz, the Turkish girl who didn’t talk. We sat down, and I asked the unsmiling waitress which of the beer selection was her favourite. In true French waitress fashion, she shrugged non-committally. I pointed out a white beer of middling price. “What about this one?”

    “Bof,” she said. “People know it.”

    “I’ll have that one then,” I said, mentally making a note to tip the next North American waitress I would meet extra for at least bothering to pretend to have an opinion on beer.

    A few minutes later, the aforementioned unsmiling waitress returned with the alcohol, and the tongues loosened as we put our middling French to use.

    I don’t remember how long it was into the conversation, but at some point somebody mentioned the Armenian genocide. A few minutes passed as we spoke about the genocide; I can no longer remember in what context we were discussing it, but the point is we were discussing it on more or less the same terms. Nobody was questioning its historical veracity.

    Well, not nobody. As everybody paused to catch their breath, Deniz’s voice mumbled from the end of the table. “It didn’t happen.”

    There was a long and awkward silence.

    Summer 2014

    I was talking to Kerem, a Turkish academic I’d met online, about my distaste for Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winning Novelist and (in my opinion), self-indulgent bore.

    “There are some people that think he won the Nobel Prize for political reasons,” he said. “Because he came out in public and talked about the Armenian genocide without denying it.”

    “That could explain why somebody who writes such boring novels about himself could have won the Nobel Prize I guess,” I said.

    “Maybe,” said Kerem.

    September 2015

    I was back in Turkey for a few days, staying in the home of an erstwhile friend. She was a university educated woman – a teacher, in fact – and absurdly liberal. So I made the mistake of assuming she believed in the Armenian genocide and mentioned it casually when talking about something related.

    She did not.

    “You want to know what I think?” she retorted. “I think that Armenians are powerful and have a lot of money and influence, and because they are all around the world their story got very popular, but that’s not the truth. It was a war. Lots of people died and I don’t know why Armenians spread this story.”

    A few days later I had drinks with another friend, an academic. “Why are Turkish people so defensive about the Armenian genocide?” I asked. “Well, Turks are very nationalistic,” she said. “But to be honest, I’m not entirely sure. You know, actually a lot of the Armenian genocide was actually perpetrated by Kurds, but they are usually more willing to accept responsibility.”

    October 2015

    I took the train to Armenia. It was the centenary of the Armenian genocide, and Yerevan was decked out in commemorative material. I met a Polish guy at the hostel I was staying at. He knew more about Armenia than I did.

    “You know,” he said. “Of course I believe in the Armenian genocide, but I think Armenians need to stop making it a big deal on the international stage. Armenia has so few friends – their borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed. All they really have is Russia. If they just made peace with everybody, they might have some chances to develop, but as it is….”

    The Next Day

    I met a woman at the post office who invited me to her house for dinner. I accepted. We spoke about her children, both adults, both successful. She was proud of them. We spoke about her divorce. She was proud of that too. We spoke about her vacation to Turkey. “You went to Turkey?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “But when people asked where I was from, I told them I was Russian, not Armenian. You know history? They are our enemies.”

    “Huh,” I said.

    A Few Days Later

    I made my way to the Armenian Genocide museum in Yerevan. I hate genocide museums, but I felt like I had to go. The museum was up on a hill; the way up was flanked by commemorative posters, including one that portrayed an eraser erasing Armenian words and a pencil replacing them with Turkish. The woman at the museum front desk suggested I join a tour that had just started. I was clearly the only person participating who was not Armenian.

    IMG_2949 IMG_2952 IMG_2954 IMG_2955 IMG_2959

    The tour guide had a monotone voice and unconsciously blasé attitude towards showing very graphic content. “The Ottomans liked to decapitate their victims” she intoned. “Here is a photograph of some Ottoman officials posing with a disembodied head in Macedonia.”

    A few minutes later she showed us photographs of a starving woman, ribs sticking from her torso, clearly close to death. One of the women in the group broke into loud sobs.

    The guide continued without seeming to register. “Some Armenians were even crucified. Look, here are some pictures of Armenians that were given face tattoos brought into harems.”

    November 2015

    I was in Azerbaijan. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union Azerbaijan and Armenia have been at war over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory which used to have a mixed population of Azeris and Armenians. After the territory was granted to Azerbaijan, Armenia claimed it; as a result of this Armenia now counts next to no Azeris and vice versa due to refugees flowing both ways. Refugees to Azerbaijan from Nagorno-Karabakh were not well taken care of, and there is a lot of resentment and hatred towards Armenia among Azerbaijanis.

    According to the owner of a bookstore I went to in Baku, Azeris are not great readers, but Azerbaijan does have a national novel, a romance called Ali and Nino. The book is about the Caucasus in the early 20th century, as exemplified through Ali, an Azeri youth, and his Georgian love Nino. Unfortunately for Ali, there is also an Armenian fellow with his eye on Nino, and Ali exacts his revenge by killing him when Ali believes that Nino has been kidnapped by him.

    I met an Azerbaijani while I was staying in Baku, and mentioned I was reading the book to him.

    “Oh,” he said, “I read half of it but never finished. What happened at the end?”

    “Well,” I said, “The Armenian guy dies and—“

    “Good,” he said.

    Baku by night.

    Baku by night.

    A Few Days Later

    I was staying at an AirBnB in Baku, home to a wonderfully hospitable family and an exchange student with whom I spent every evening. This particular evening, the extended family had been invited over. One of them mentioned the Armenian genocide. Needless to say, I was surprised.

    “You believe in the Armenian genocide?” I asked.

    He seemed taken aback, but quickly recovered himself.

    “No!” he said. “Armenians are – Armenians are, well it was a war, and lots of people died. Turks died, Armenians died. The same number of Armenians and Turks died, that’s it. Same number, same number.”

     

    No Comments / Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey /

  • December 18, 2015

    How Platzkart Proved a Window into Azerbaijani Political Culture

    Azerbaijani flagAzerbaijan is best approached by train, preferably in platzkart. At least, that was my experience. I left Tbilisi at night en route to Baku, settling comfortably into my seat. The staff on the train were friendly, and we communicated in a cheerful mixture of Turkish and Russian. The staff spoke a blitzkrieg version of this patois, which I understood more from their body language than from their words. Each time I answered a cry went up. “Oh! She speaks Turkish.” “Oh! She speaks Russian!” It was a ridiculous considering the level of the things I was managing to say, but no matter – victory was ours. I got bedding and tea and I was not unceremoniously kicked out of bed in the middle of the night because I’d misread my ticket and taken the wrong berth.

    Early on in the journey, I met another woman. She was also a foreigner, but living and studying in Baku. “I was just in Tbilisi to visit some friends,” she said. “Writers. It’s very dangerous to be a writer in Azerbaijan if you have anything to say about the government. So there’s a big Azerbaijani ex-pat community in Tbilisi.”

    I sat back and got ready for the best part of platzkart – listening to other people tell me stuff.

    She continued, “Azerbaijani culture is very traditional, so there’s a lot they can do to prevent you from writing about the government that isn’t sending you to jail. One of my friends is a journalist who wrote some negative stuff about the government. In response, they bugged her house and filmed her having sex with her boyfriend. Then they got her mother to publicly disown her as virginity is still a bit deal in Azerbaijan. Now she lives in Tbilisi.”

    To be honest, I had known barely anything about Azerbaijan up until that point, except for what my Turkish friends had told me about similarities between Azerbaijanis and Turks, and that Azerbaijan and Armenia were locked in an ongoing conflict dating back 25 years. Other than that? – zilch, nada, nil.

    I began to listen very closely.

    “Azerbaijan has huge problems with freedom of the press, and with its political culture in general,” she continued. “People in Georgia sometimes think that life is better in Azerbaijan as Azerbaijanis have money because of their oil, and I like to tell them that they should just try living for a month under the Aliev’s, and see how they like it.”

    “Uh, pardon?” I said. “Who are the Alievs?”

    “Oh,” she said, “They’ve basically ruled Azerbaijan since the break-up of the Soviet Union. It’s a dictatorship. They have elections periodically, but they’re not democratic at all. If you say anything against them, you’ll feel the consequences.”

    “Azerbaijan considers itself to be a European country,” she continued. “Which is kind of hilarious because they don’t act European at all. Last year, we had the European games here and the Azerbaijani government realized that they had a huge stray dog problem. So they set up a cull and killed all the dogs in these, like, little doggy gas chambers.* Which was obviously a problem for the Europeans who heard about it. And I mean, I understand why culturally that wasn’t a problem for the Azerbaijanis to kill the dogs this way, but they shouldn’t make pretentions to Europeanness when their entire way of functioning is different from that of Europe.”

    At dawn, I gazed out the window. We were riding through the oilfields, a moon-like landscape punctuated by oil derricks, trucks, and filthy pools of water. My platzkart acquaintance said, “The best way to approach Baku is by train. When you fly into the airport and come into the city by car – well, they’ve built this huge wall around the highway to hide anything ugly from view. Azerbaijan is very concerned with how it looks. But in reality – there is a lot of poverty in the outskirts of Baku.” She was right. We began to pass muddy coloured houses with laundry hung over concrete walls. Everything was a dull, dun-coloured affair. There were no people outside, as it was early in the morning. Just a sandy abandoned-seeming settlement of dusty houses.

    Blurry photographs from the train

    Blurry photographs of Azerbaijan at dawn, from the train.

    Homes outside of Baku.

    Homes outside of Baku.

    Baku couldn’t have been more different. Grandiose, wealthy, and clean, the transition from country to city by train could not have better illustrated Azerbaijan’s contradictions. Azerbaijan looks really good if you don’t look too closely, and it puts a lot of effort into looking that way.

    Fairly typical old-style building in Baku. On the right hand side, you can barely see some newer skyscrapers.

    Fairly typical old-style building in Baku. On the right hand side, you can barely see some newer skyscrapers, known as the Flame Towers.

     

    On November 1, Azerbaijan held elections. It was the same day as Turkey’s fateful elections, so I wasn’t paying that much attention, but I did ask the Azerbaijanis I knew if they planned on voting.

    “Nah,” they all said. “We know who’s going to win. Azerbaijani elections haven’t ever really been democratic.” They didn’t seem extraordinarily perturbed by this, more just used to the status quo.

    Where I was staying, I ran into another European girl studying in Azerbaijan. It is fair to say that the education she was receiving in Azerbaijan was not of the academic kind. “Oh,” she said, “None of the courses that the school said were available are actually available, and the courses that are available aren’t in English. They also take us international people around Azerbaijan or make us go to the lectures of visiting lecturers. Then they take lots of pictures and promptly post them on the website, just so that they can prove they’re an international institution.”

    While I was there, she went on one of these excursions. That evening, three hours after she arrived home, the pictures already graced the website of her school, groups of blonde and brunette students proving Azerbaijan’s international, European credentials.

    I went back to Tbilisi after a week. A few days later I met an American guy in a coffee shop who turned out to have worked for an Azerbaijani NGO for several years. “Oh my gosh, it was so bad,” he said. “The whole Azerbaijani political culture. We were even involved in propaganda campaigns to say that the Armenian genocide didn’t happen. They would parade me around, as an American, to prove how international their NGO was. I had to get out, so I came to Tbilisi. Then I was part of a team that created a website about all of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners. There are loads.”

    I ran into the same guy a few weeks later at a party. “Azerbaijan is so concerned about appearances,” he said, as we drunkenly observed the dancing throngs of our peers in front of us. “During the European games, they took those old Soviet Era apartment buildings and covered them with a kind of shiny material so they would look better. The only problem was that the material was very flammable, and a few of the buildings caught on fire. Soooo….not good. And of course, their elections are not democratic. Election observers don’t even go there any longer. They’ve just given up. But there is one company that goes, out of Kansas. The government pays them to come, and they give them rave reviews for election transparency, which the government then parades around to prove their legitimacy. Before I worked in Azerbaijan, I didn’t even know you could do that.”

    “There was also this time,” he went on, “where the Azerbaijani government made a documentary film. They paid for it to be shown around the world, and made sure that in the advertising they wrote things like “acclaimed around the world!” and “Shown in loads of countries!” And of course, not everybody who they approached to show the film could recognize it for the propaganda stunt that it was, so it really got shown around the world.”

    No mention of the Kansas election observing agency here, but you can see a bit of Azerbaijani public relations technique. If you want a fun thing to do for a few minutes, do go check out Ilham Aliev's Twitter feed.

    No mention of the Kansas election observing agency here, but you can see a bit of Azerbaijani public relations technique. If you want a fun thing to do for a few minutes, do go check out Ilham Aliev’s Twitter feed.

    While Azerbaijani political culture is stifling, I had a good trip there. The people I met were mostly kind. There is more to write about Azerbaijan. Stay tuned.

    To see the political prisoners in Azerbaijan, check out https://prisoners.watch/en

    *I’m just repeating what I heard. She actually said, “little doggy gas chambers.”

    1 Comment / Azerbaijan /

  • December 10, 2015

    I Love Platzkart

    The legacy of the Cold War has left North Americans with precious little knowledge of the post-Soviet world. Sadly, some of the things that North Americans don’t know are rather nifty.

    Ex-Soviet transportation infrastructure makes North American transportation infrastructure seem an ersatz, shameful excuse. Expensive North American taxis, buses that take forever to arrive, and subway systems that only privilege huge cities pale in comparison to post-Soviet transportation infrastructure, which tends to be efficient and affordable. Yes, the subways are creaky, the buses look like they haven’t been updated since 1940, the marshrutka* drivers clearly have a collective death wish, and the taxis are uncomfortable and painted in jewel-tones, but I’ll be darned if the whole system doesn’t just work better than it does in North America.

    Vladikavkaz tram

    A tram in Vladikavkaz.

    This isn't a taxi, but many post-Soviet taxis do look like this.

    This isn’t a taxi, but many post-Soviet taxis do look like this.

    Although I geek out about all aspects of transportation infrastructure in the former Soviet Union, one particular type of transportation is special.

    Platzkart. I love platzkart.

    Platzkart is a class of train travel. When you travel by train in North America or Europe, you buy either a seat or a berth in a cabin. In the post-Soviet republics, platzkart is an intermediate option. If you buy a ticket in platzkart you will spend the night in a bed in a train car that contains 54 beds. It’s like a hostel . . . in a train.

    Russians tend to feel disdainful towards the idea of platzkart. I told a group of men from Krasnodar about my love for platzkart. “What?!” they yelled all together. “Is it the not showering? Is it not having hot water? Is it feeling dirty and smelly that you like?” They mimed showering with a bucket of cold water in a postage-stamp sized bathroom in platzkart over a several day trip.

    I told another group of Russians from Moscow. “What is it you like about it?” they asked, perplexed. “The smell?”

    I told my Russian teacher, and now every time I change cities she asks whether I travelled platzkart, and then laughs her head off. Of all my Russian friends, she is the kindest to platzkart and can understand why I choose to travel that way – but she still finds it hilarious that I’m such a big fan.

    Each wagon in platzkart contains 54 beds. Half of them are lower berths, and half are upper. At the beginning of the journey, everybody sits on the lower berths. As evening approaches, passengers roll out a provided mattress pad and make the beds with the provided linens.

    Platzkart upper berths

    Platzkart from above, before making the beds.

    Platzkart doesn’t really smell. (There was one time the toilet broke, but that was just once.) Yes, if you have back problems or are a light sleeper, or are taller than 5’6/168 cm or so, platzkart might not be for you. The berths are usually a bit hard, sometimes people snore, and people will probably bump your hands or feet if they stray a few centimeters off the bed, which is easy to do because the beds are only about 170 cm.

    The pros outweigh the cons though. Platzkart is a great social mixer. Spending 12, 24 or 36 hours in the same space with no internet starts conversations flowing. I’ve met missionaries, political scientists, tourists, a girl who moved to Azerbaijan for love (yikes), people who grew up in the train’s destination, and so on. Platzkart holds people captive and all but forces them to exchange stories. Half the time I leave platzkart, I leave with a phone number of somebody who lives in that town. “Give me a call if you need help,” they say. “Really, if anything goes wrong, just call.”

    That’s not to mention the funny things you witness in platzkart. The woman who was trying to get 20 packs of diapers across the border without paying duty? Well, the whole train had to wait, but only the folks in platzkart were able to laugh because we were the only ones who knew what was going on.

    In platzkart, people have shared their food with me, given me advice about travel, patiently corrected my broken Russian, invited me to breakfast in their homes, and promised to help me celebrate my birthday. They have also provided me invaluable information about the cultures of my destinations, things I might not have learned only by travelling to the destination because conversations are more difficult to start when people are not forced to occupy the same space. In fact, a few of my upcoming blog posts started as conversations in platzkart.

    Platzkart is also the safest way to travel as a woman travelling alone in the ex-Soviet Union. It is possible to buy a bed in a four-berth (kupe) or two-berth (lux) cabin, but unless you are travelling with friends, it only means that you will be sharing a cabin with one or three strangers instead of 53. In platzkart, not only will 52 people hear if something goes wrong, stealing is more challenging because everybody keeps an eye on others’ stuff.

    In the upcoming weeks and months, I am planning a series of posts inspired by platzkart conversations. Stay tuned.

    *A marshrutka is to the post-Soviet world what a dolmus is to Turkey.

    No Comments / Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ex-Soviet Union, Georgia /

  • November 12, 2015

    Going Viral or How I Try to Give Slippers the Slip

    I have a cold. I’ve had it for a little over a week. No need to be concerned – it’s a small thing, a little throat scratchiness and a bit of fatigue at the end of the day. Nothing major.

    How did I get this cold? A virus, obviously. But not according to everybody I seem to meet. For them, I have this cold because I am cold.

    This is actually an Ebola virus, not a cold. But it looks cool, doesn't it?

    This is actually an Ebola virus, not a cold. But it looks cool, doesn’t it?

    In Canada, I walk around in bare or sock feet all the time. In Turkey and the Caucasus, a mark of a good host is that they will give you slippers upon entering their house. These are often cheap plastic affairs of the wrong size, sometimes with a high heel, and I am more comfortable without them. Usually I accept them out of politeness, take them off at the earliest opportunity, and then forget to put them back on. At some point somebody usually notices.

    Host: Hey, you aren’t wearing any slippers! Did my mother not give you any?

    Me: Oh, ah, uh, yes, slippers. Well, you see, in Canada we don’t actually wear them. Not that much anyway. She did give me some, but I just forgot about them. It’s a small and insignificant cultural difference, but I really prefer not to wear them. No problem.

    Host: But, you are going to get cold.

    Me: No, I swear I’m not cold. I’m perfectly comfortable.

    Host: Yes, you are going to get cold, and then you are going to get a cold.

    Me: No, don’t worry, I won’t. I won’t get a virus from not wearing slippers.

    Host: You don’t get a cold from a virus, you get it from being cold. Here, I’ll go and get you some slippers.

    Me: I guess I’ll just get them myself.

    At the end of this conversation I feel like I am spitting on my hosts’ hospitality by not wanting to wear slippers; believing that their guest is doing something unhealthy in their home and not doing anything about it might make them feel as though they are a bad host or as though it is their fault that I have fallen ill, and I don’t particularly want them to feel that way.

    (Oddly, this concern does not extend to smoking, which has been known to cause far worse chronic and potentially lethal respiratory problems, but hey. Cancer, chemo, cold, chicken soup – they all start with ‘c’ so they can’t be much different.)

    Anyway, I also don’t want to create more work for my hosts by making them chase me around the house with my neglected pair of slippers. So usually I put on the damn slippers and then forget about them again, and then I do the same dance at every place I go to in the hopes that I will eventually be able to get away with my rebellious discalceatism.

    When I finally did get a cold, I had another version of this conversation.

    Host: Didn’t my mother give you slippers? You must have gotten the cold from walking around on the cold floor.

    Me: No, it’s a virus. I’m sure of it. Canada is very cold and we don’t just all have a cold all the time. I’m definitely sure it’s a virus.

    Host: No . . . I’m sure. It’s because you’re cold.

    Me: Okay, fine, I’ll wear the slippers.

    I have given up on convincing people of the scientific impossibility of colds being related to actually being cold.* If the fact that I am from one of the coldest countries in the world, have lived in a city that was regularly -40 in the winter time, waited every day for the bus in said temperatures and did not perpetually have a cold does not convince them, I’m not sure what will.**

    *Obviously I can recognize that being extremely cold and having hypothermia will compromise your immune system and make you more susceptible to catching cold, but inside it is always above 17 degrees.

    **This anecdotal argument is actually a logical fallacy, but it is not only me. All Canadians do not spend from October to April with a cold. I am confident that these results could be backed up with science.

    photo by:
    2 Comments / Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey /

  • November 6, 2015

    Armenian and Azerbaijani Family Culture. Also, Dryers.

    A question I get asked a lot on my travels through the Caucasus is “Do you live with your family?” Since I have not lived with my parents for a while, I usually tell the truth, which is “No.” Then I grin mischievously and say “my parents live a 12 hour drive from me.”

    People respond in a variety of ways. Shock, horror, consternation, pity. Sometimes even mild surprise. The point is, that sort of thing is really not normal here.

    Clean

    In fact, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, I was told that while older children have the right to move away from their parents when they marry, the role of the youngest male child is usually to stay. If this youngest child wishes to get married, he must find a wife who will move in with his parents after their happy nuptials. In more liberal families, they may also move into an apartment close by.

    If you are an unmarried person such as myself, it is typically your lot to live with your parents until that happy day should come, unless you decide to go away for school.

    When I tell people that there are no such obligations in North America, their faces make me feel a bit judged and I begin to feel defensive and like I have to explain that in North America we really love our parents, but that things are just different there.

    I had a conversation with a man I met in Azerbaijan about this, and I started to do this.

    Me: But, you know, you have to understand. In North America, we really love our parents, but we are just more independent. And lots of people do live close to their parents.

    Him: Well, we are very loyal to our parents and that’s a good thing. But in some ways, maybe leaving them earlier is better. I’m 29 and I’m going to the States next year for school. And you know how to do everything you need in a house, but I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to cook or do laundry or iron. My Mom does everything for me. Last time my Mom was sick, I had to take my clothes to my sister’s.

    He said this without the deep shame that I can only imagine a 29 year old Canadian would feel at making the same admission. Which is reasonable, I guess, because in Azerbaijani culture this is normal.

    Me: Oh, well, laundry’s easy. You just put the clothes and soap in and press a few buttons. Then you take it out when it’s done. If you want to learn how, I’m sure there’s a tutorial on YouTube about how to do it.

    Him: Hey, that’s a good idea! I used a YouTube tutorial to learn how to change the oil filter in my car, but I never thought about it for laundry.

    Me: Yeah, YouTube has everything.

    Him: I also heard you are supposed to separate darks and whites?

    Me: Yes.

    Him: What about ironing? My sister told me that ironing is harder than laundry.

    This brings me to another topic: the humble dryer. As this man will hopefully learn upon arrival in the United States, North America is possessed with this exceedingly handy machine which will perform a number of nifty tasks:

    De-wrinkle your clothes (not perfectly, but maybe enough that you can forego ironing.)

    Dry your clothes.

    Warm up your clothes. There is nothing like a cold winter night spent snuggled up in some pyjamas lifted straight from the dryer, or the feeling after a shower of wrapping yourself in a huge snuggly warm towel.

    Kill bed bugs.

    Alas, rate of dryer ownership in Turkey and the Caucasus is so abysmally low that I have never even seen one. Everybody dries their clothes on a line, outside if there is sun and inside if it is cold or raining.

    I know dryers are big consumers of electricity and that they are taxing on the environment, but when it rains for three days straight, it gets a bit tiring to look at your pants that you washed three days ago and hope that they’ll be dry the next day. It is also mystifying to me that no entrepreneur has said, “Hey wait a second. This dryer thing could really take off in places where people don’t have dryers.”

    Alas, no. In a fit of inspiration, I wrote a little ditty to be sung to the theme of that favourite thing song from the Sound of Music.

    Towels that are scratchy and jeans that are damp

    Laundry racks making your living room cramped

    Didn’t think I would say this but I miss static cling

    But in this region it’s just not a thing…

    photo by:
    No Comments / Armenia, Azerbaijan /

  • October 28, 2015

    Azerbaijani Culture II: Do Azerbaijanis Eat Pork?

    In Turkey, it is common to hear about how similar Azerbaijanis are to Turkish people. Azerbaijanis also talk a lot about these similarities, and many Turks and Azerbaijanis alike consider Turks and Azerbaijanis one ethnic group. “We are like brothers,” I’ve heard many say, “we are both Turkic peoples. We understand each other.”

    It isn’t a preposterous claim. Azerbaijani is generally mutually intelligible with Turkish, although noticeably different. And like Turkey, Azerbaijan is, ostensibly, a predominately Muslim country. Unlike Turkey, however, Azerbaijan spent over 70 years as part of the Soviet Union and, before that, much of the 19th century as part of the Russian Empire. So when I ask, “really? Are they really the same,” people say things like “Yes, but a little more Soviet. Cool people in Azerbaijan, really. But really very much like Turks.”

    The view from my window, a red star hearkening back to Azerbaijan's Soviet past.

    The view from my window, a red star hearkening back to Azerbaijan’s Soviet past. The number underneath the star is 1929.

    Arriving in Azerbaijan having been fed a great deal about all the similarities, I was expecting Azerbaijan to feel very similar to Turkey. This was not the case. Azerbaijan feels more like Turkey’s cousin than its brother. Observing in which ways it reflects Turkish culture and to what extent time spent as part of two different Russian Empires has influenced the way of life gives rise to some curious situations.

    Which brings me to this question: do Azerbaijanis eat pork? In Turkey, I have never seen even the most ardently secular of my friends touch a piece of pig-flesh. Some have told me things like this, “I’m a staunch athiest and I think Islam is a terrible influence on Turkey and the world in general, but I don’t eat pork . . . for cultural reasons.”

    In Turkey, I wouldn’t have a clue where to go to get a piece of pork, and although this food anthropologist says that there is one place to go in Istanbul, it’s pretty clear that it’s an out-of-sight out-of-mind kind of dealio. Basically, even though you can buy pork in a very few places in Turkey, it is pretty hush hush and eating or selling it openly might even qualify as a political statement or demonstration of some kind.

    (And what kind of sick person would even consider eating pork when it could undermine the most munificent sultan of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan’s, status as the moral conscience of Turkey?)

    ANYWAY, I was surprised during my first walk in Azerbaijan to see this shop. In case the pigs on the sign and the porcine carcasses in the window are not enough of a clue for you, the sign says “Pig Meat” in Azerbaijani.

    Pork Azerbaijan
    I’ll take things you wouldn’t see in Turkey for $100 monsieur Trebek.

    Later that day I arrived at my first Azerbaijani grocery store. Looking around the cold cut section for some sucuk, I was astonished by the variety available. As I stood there, I spied an imam shopping the same section a few metres away from me. He picked up different types of sausage, and put them down. I continued perusing the selection and all of a sudden it dawned on me. Some of these sausages had labels in Cyrillic. They were the same sausages that they sell at the Russian store next to my place in Canada. And I was sure that about half of them were made of . . . duh duh duh . . . swine flesh.

    I looked around to see if I could see what the imam had chosen in the end, fully prepared for the irony of seeing him drop a nice juicy moskovskaya kielbasa in his basket. Unfortunately, he was gone, probably with some halal option after all.

    I started looking at the ingredient labels to confirm my hunch. Turns out that I was right. They sure sell a helluva lot of pork products here in Azerbaijan. After reading a lot of ingredient labels, I can tell you that a bit less than half of the sausage in this picture contains pork, and lots of it was manufactured in Azerbaijan itself.

    IMG_3018

    That evening, I went out with an Azerbaijani fellow. I wanted to know more about the culture of pork products in Azerbaijan. And so I led with a sure-thing kind of question: “Do Azerbaijanis eat pork?”

    He said, “No.”

    Then, “Azerbaijan is a Muslim country.”

    “Oh,” I said, surprised. “I saw a lot of it around so I thought that they might eat it.” I showed him the picture of the pork butcher I’d seen earlier. He seemed as surprised as I had been at his response. “Where did you find this?!”

    “Just…on the road. And I also saw a lot in the grocery store.”

    “Well,” he said, “mostly Azerbaijanis don’t eat pork. Only when they’re not paying attention to ingredient labels maybe.”

    I didn’t push the issue; I only thought “they must not pay attention a lot judging from the amount of pork on the grocery store shelves.”

    I decided to ask somebody else. She said “Well, in our meals we don’t typically eat it, but in sausage we do. Everybody knows that pork makes the best sausage.”

    So there. Do Azerbaijanis eat pork? Yes, yes they do. Unless they don’t want to, I suppose, as there are many halal options available. Unlike in Turkey, it is not particularly stigmatized.

     

    No Comments / Azerbaijan, Turkey /

  • October 27, 2015

    Azerbaijani Culture I: Western Hospitality through the Lens of the Canapé

    Hospitality cultures in Turkey and the Caucasus are very different from hospitality cultures in North America and the West.

    I have already written a bit about Turkish hospitality, and touched on how it can provoke extreme culture shock. I plan to write a whole not tongue-in-cheek post on it at some point as it is definitely one of the most difficult things for me to navigate as a Canadian.

    I can only imagine that Turkish and Caucasian peoples experience an inside-out version of this when they spend time in Europe or North America.

    According to a British girl living in Azerbaijan with her Azerbaijani boyfriend that I met on the train to Baku, this creates a general perception that people from the West are cold and inhospitable.

    Canapes

    Mmmm, canapés…

    She said, “I sometimes have to remind my boyfriend that Azerbaijanis don’t have a monopoly on hospitality – that we also have hospitality in the U.K., but we express it differently. Most of the Azerbaijanis I’ve met think that we are cold people and that they can’t expect to receive hospitality from us, which is true of some people, of course, but not really a fair assumption.

    There was this one time I invited a bunch of our friends all round for dinner. When they arrived, it turned out they’d all been out to eat together just before and they weren’t hungry. I’d made so much food; a massive lasagna and everything. So I asked, ‘Why? I made tonnes of food.’ And I’d made everything – I made desserts.

    They said, ‘We were really hungry and we expected to come over and there would be nothing but canapés and like, tiny little cucumber sandwiches. So we ate before.’

    I said, ‘What? Why would I invite you over and serve you cucumber sandwiches?’ I can only imagine that at some point they all went to some British person’s house or something and that’s what it was… They probably expected a full meal and were really hungry the whole time. So they prepared in advance for my invitation.”

     

    photo by:
    No Comments / Azerbaijan /